Podcast Mercado Feiras is back. We are working for you and for you. We are also celebrating together with the WR team 20 years of mega handmade. Wonderful thing. We are receiving a very important visit. First, our president of WR, Rita. Thank you for visiting our moment.
I thank you for the invitation, for your participation. We know how important it is to talk about this trade fair market, right?
Of course. And your fair, I'll tell you, see?
Wonderful. I even joked with the team yesterday, a tsunami of people, you [laughter] couldn't walk, right? Something absurd. But that's good. It means it's serious work and of great importance for the segment. Now it all started in Franca, in the land of my dear mother. You at 12 years old started working, buying at a store called Cristaleira. Was that it?
Yes. My aunt was the founder who didn't have children. She bought it, she was a saleswoman for a long time in a store across the street, Casigina. She got married, moved from Franca. Her dream was to return to Franca, buy a store to generate employment for the family. It was called Cristaleira.
Yes. And I at 12 years old would go to work during vacations. Later at 17 I joined. I am an only daughter, only niece.
And little did they know what would happen to that store, right?
My aunt passed away two years ago, she still noticed quite a bit.
Today there are 1200 stores. We have a lot, we are also digital, right? Yes, yes. How wonderful. And we see there at Hul Alegria the joy of people when they say Magazine Luiza, ah, everyone starts clapping and desperation and they are presents of the best quality. You took over the presidency in 91.
Yes, but I had been commercial director for many years. Yes, since I was a girl. Then I disappeared, the family went to Marold, it's also a small family. After 2011 we went public, there was a whole path to professionalize, but we are a family business and very proud of that.
And how do you leave that for new entrepreneurs, right, especially female, female sector that is growing more and more female leadership, right, this word is very fashionable to undertake, entrepreneur. I usually say that undertaking, Rita knows that, is solution. For me the entrepreneur is the one who seeks solution. It's impressive, right, Rita? There's a problem, we seek solution.
I joke that the company looks like a vegetable garden, it only has cucumbers. So when [laughter] they come into my office, you know what I say? Talk, did you come with a cucumber or did you come with a solution? What problem? [laughter] There are plenty here. Bring me along with the problem. A solution, plan B, right? Amen. Amen. Amen. So, we are used to seeking solution. That is the synonym of entrepreneur for me, who has a different head, who sees the glass more full than the glass more empty, right? And
Look what Rita did at this fair here, folks. For 15 years I've been rehearsing to come. This last time I said six months before, set aside my schedule because I want to stay an afternoon.
But everything has its right time. Our paths cross at the moment
WR is also on this path of success, right?
Oh my, look, I visit fairs outside Brazil, I've never seen such energy, a methodology, because her methodology is not just lectures, it's a methodology of teaching how to fish.
Yes, yes, we really have that. And I think that's a big differentiator. There is no fair in the world in the format of Mega, because either you have a fair just for business or you have a fair just for the consumer. When we bring here, as I introduced you, people from outside, eh, companies from Germany, companies from the United States, they even have difficulty understanding how we manage to have a fair where you have commerce and industry together and the public and the retail with us, right? Everything wonderful.
I've been learning since the moment I arrived here.
But you transformed the store into one of the largest retail stores in Brazil.
What a wonderful thing. I even dare to say, right? It's because there was a period when the store entered, when the digit entered that nobody believed in physical stores. We, on the contrary, believed and digitized the physical store. I want to invite here, there is everyone who hasn't yet. I'm getting very much on the edge. I went back, I was a saleswoman many years ago. We eh acquired a former Livraria Cultura at Conjunto Nacional. Wonderful. Space we transformed into a place of experience, where we have the art gallery, you enter one side, the other side is totally digital. We have Teatro Eva R, which was already the name, during the day it is YouTube theater, it's for young influencers. At night it's a normal play, we to bring the new don't need to kill the past.
